


Worse than Loneliness

by TeaNSympathy



Category: For the People (TV 2018)
Genre: Divorce, Episode Related, Episode s01 e06 Everybody's a Superhero, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-04
Updated: 2019-02-04
Packaged: 2019-10-22 02:26:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17654288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeaNSympathy/pseuds/TeaNSympathy
Summary: The worst thing about living with a go-bag wasn't the going. It was the coming back.





	Worse than Loneliness

Jill isn’t sure why she mentioned the go-bag to Allison. Her personal life isn’t something she generally cares to discuss, least of all with co-workers. Similarly, she isn’t sure why she informed Sandra that she wouldn’t recommend getting married. She wants to protect them, she supposes, the girls (and yes, she knows they are grown women and extremely competent attorneys at that, but it’s impossible not to think of them that way). She looks at them with their clear eyes and their open hearts and wants them never to know what it's like to go from being young and in love to waking up in middle age, realizing that you’ve spent so many years deforming yourself to fit into a relationship that feels like a prison that you can barely remember what shape you used to be.

The worst thing about living with a go-bag wasn’t the going. It was the coming back. She’d grabbed the blue nylon gym bag full of clothes and toiletries and gotten out of Dodge once when Cliff screamed at her that she’d ruined his life, once when he drank too much and threw a loaf of bread at her, once when they were both so angry that neither had said a word for three days and she could no longer bear the icy silence. Each time she’d returned, determined not to admit failure, not to disappoint her family, not to give up. Jill hated giving up.  
On the night Cliff’s girlfriend showed up at the door in tears looking for him, she’d finally left for good. As she slammed out of the apartment for the last time, go-bag firmly in hand, Jill could have kissed the young woman. At last she had a reason to leave that no one, not even she herself, could take issue with. For months after that she’d felt as though her feet were helium balloons, weightless with the joy and relief of being alone, of being herself once again. 

Her apartment is never a place she wants to leave now; it’s her sanctuary and everything in the space reflects who she is, yet the blue nylon bag still sits in the corner of her living room. It holds workout clothes and sneakers these days, but honestly the visits she’s made to the gym in the last few years probably number in the single digits. Its primary purpose is a different one. On her most insomniac nights, when she looks out at the dark city in the wee hours of the morning, when she yearns for somebody next to her at the window, she looks at the bag and is reminded that there are worse things than loneliness.


End file.
